Gerald Pencer, 52, Chairman of Cott

Published: February 9, 1998

Gerald Pencer, the chairman and chief executive of the Cott Corporation, the soft-drink maker based in Toronto, died on Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He was 52.

The cause of death was brain cancer, a company spokeswoman said.

In his eight-year tenure, Mr. Pencer built Cott into an international business, with annual sales growing from $25 million to $1.4 billion last year. Mr. Pencer was named chairman of the company, which was started by his father in the 1950's, when it went public in 1985. He took over day-to-day operations when he became president and chief executive in 1989.

Cott now bottles branded products for such chains as A.&P, Loblaw's and Safeway in Canada and Albertson's, Kmart, Safeway, 7-Eleven and Wal-Mart stores in the United States. The company also has customers in Australia, Britain, Hong Kong, Israel and Japan.

Mr. Pencer was born in Montreal and attended George Williams College there. He started several businesses when he was young, including a vending machine business and Curley Joe's, a restaurant chain. In the late 1970's, he founded Financial Trustco Capital, a financial services concern that had interests in trust, insurance and investment companies. Financial Trustco suffered severe losses in the 1987 stock market crash and its assets were sold in the late 1980's.

Mr. Pencer is survived by his wife, Nancy; two daughters, Stacey Cynamon and Holly; a son, Clarke, and two grandchildren, all of Toronto.